Old computers. New hardware. Questionable ideas.

Photos

Real photos of real hardware, mostly taken with my phone pointed at a CRT. Click any picture for the full-size version. Everything here was rebuilt from its pixels before it went up, so none of the original metadata (GPS included) came along.

Atlas 286 on the Packard Bell PB686

The bench: a ViewSonic CRT, a keyboard resting on the open PB686 chassis with its floppy drives, a USB microscope and a soldering station on a wooden shelf
The bench, 6 October 2026. The PB686 is the open chassis under the keyboard. Glamorous it is not. Full size (284 KB).
POST text on a CRT: Atlas 286 (universal) M3, base memory 640 KB, fixed disk 0: 488 MB, CMOS checksum OK, Starting MS-DOS...
The first boot of the from-scratch Atlas, 5 October 2026. The banner still says M3. Full size (134 KB).
A blue Atlas 286 Setup screen on day one, with the hard disk showing as None
Atlas's own Setup on day one, 5 October 2026, before the CF card went in. Full size (373 KB).
The Atlas 286 Setup Standard page showing the date, time, floppy drives, the auto-detected 488 MB CF card with its 993/16/63 geometry, 640 KB base and 2048 KB extended memory
Setup the next evening, 6 October 2026, now with the CF card detected and the 2 MB memory board fitted. Full size (303 KB).
The Atlas 286 Setup Advanced page: boot order, quick POST, NUM LOCK, CPU speed, the serial POST mirror, the ROM monitor, console redirection, and CD-ROM and Zip boot options
The Advanced page, 6 October 2026. The help line still says "TBD (Tony's wording)". Full size (279 KB).
The Atlas 286 Setup Exit page with Save changes and exit, Discard changes and exit, and Load defaults
And the Exit page, same evening. Full size (258 KB).
Fractint drawing the Mandelbrot set in bright colours on the PB686's CRT
Fractint drawing the Mandelbrot set on the PB686, 7 October 2026. The day before, it insisted that video mode didn't exist. Full size (397 KB).
Windows 3.1 About Program Manager dialog in Standard Mode, licensed to Atlas Test, showing 2,155 KB free and 86% system resources
Windows 3.1 in Standard mode on the M12 build, 10 October 2026. Licensed to "Atlas Test", naturally. Full size (320 KB).
Two One ROM boards glowing red in the PB686's BIOS sockets U41 and U40, each with a USB cable plugged in
The two One ROMs in the BIOS sockets on 25 October 2026, the morning M17 passed. Full size (221 KB).

The IBM 5170

An IBM 5170 PC/AT with its cover off, seen from above: power supply, drive cage, and the system board with memory chips and expansion slots
The IBM 5170 on the day it arrived, 24 October 2026. Not powered on yet. Full size (502 KB).
An IBM 5170 chassis with the cover off: front panel with keylock, a 5.25 inch floppy drive, the drive cage, a memory card and the power supply
The same machine from the front. It gets refurbished before it gets electricity. Full size (277 KB).

NetISA

Anti-static bags of components, capacitors, resistors and a yellow 8-bit ISA prototype board spread on a wooden bench
The NetISA parts, April 2026. Still a pile of parts. Full size (317 KB).